Of Nobel prizes and Britney Spearses

Royters (Dahab Bureau Chief - Peregrine Nation) - As with most solutions to complex problems the answer is often right on your doorstep. Few things are more complex than space and space, apart from being something between Britney Spear's ears, is also the human race's final frontier, if you believe the opening credits of Star Trek. And, let's face it, who could question such an authority.

The thought that the universe is finite has been worrying me and a number of world class physicists for quite some time. Them because they want to win a Nobel Prize and me because if space is finite I want to know what is on the other side.

Big Bang, Big Crunch, M Theory and String Landscapes are all well and good but, how do we prove these theories? Belief is often not enough and how many of those names could be rock band names I wonder.

Uni or multiverse is one of the biggest questions that eminent theorists such as Tegmark, Linde, Wheeler, Feynman and Everett have struggled with over the years, that and wondering why no-one wants to talk to them at parties.

The multiverse theory is in the ascendance and this leads to the question, would these multiverses all be separate and distinct or would they be able to connect? The two camps are separated by the sad and lonely geeks who have no friends, AKA Norman No Mates, and everyone else. As the Norman's are working in isolation and don't like to mix I have concentrated my reading on the multiverse theory. They also have easy to read popup books on the subject.

It turns out that one of the conundrums for the multiverse theory is that there would need to be a common point in all the multiverses where they could interact. Like a porthole through to another world. This theory was popular with some of the Normans who like science fiction, but they quickly dropped the idea when they realised it meant socialising.

Finding a multiverse commonality was considered to be the Holy Grail of physics, philosophy, and fiction, particularly in science fiction. I use the past tense because I have solved the problem. You are reading my submission for next year's Nobel Prize for Physics and Pulitzer for Explanatory Reporting. What? It could happen.

Looking through space for possible commonalities among multiverses has taken its toll. Giving up was never a possibility. But, crunches on bangs and theories on bubbles, brown paper envelopes tied up with M-strings - these are a few of my favourite things. When the slog bites, when the phone rings, when I was feeling sad, I simply remembered my favourite things, and then I didn't feel, so bad.

Julie Andrews if the answer was right in front of us all. I proved the mathematical formula and then had to look for examples in our physical world. Here on earth. The commonalities have certain characteristics. A sameness, an increase in mass enough to cause a local instability, a density enough to suck in mass at one end and spit it out at the other. The clues kept stacking up until it hit me - shopping malls!

Multiverses will make connections via shopping malls. They all look the same, they all have the same shops, the same people and some of them definitely look as if they have come from other uni or multiverses.

The tricky part of proving this theory is seeing where the openings to other multiverses may be. We could follow some of the weirder looking inhabitants of the malls but that could be a bit too random. You may simply end up in one of the designer clothes shops.

Running fast at walls and seeing if you pass into the next multiverse could be painful if not successful. So I'm asking for your help to finish up this research. If you wouldn't mind just walking around the mall feeling walls and shop fronts for openings that are not readily obvious to the naked eye and then report back to me that would be great. Of course if the opening is into Britney Spears' head you'll need to keep looking. Sit vis nobiscum.